My Internet: Sam Adler-Bell
The writer and Know Your Enemy cohost says Millennial media people were never as woke as they seemed.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
Every other week we quiz a “very online” person for their essential guide to what’s good on the internet.
Today we welcome Sam Adler-Bell, a cohost of the Dissent magazine podcast Know Your Enemy, columnist and feature writer at New York magazine, and book reviewer who recently took on Ibram X. Kendi’s latest. Sam is vaguely concerned about everything having to do with Larry Ellison, a profoundly sinister figure who should probably be in prison, and likes to walk around his apartment reading ridiculous parts of The New York Times in print out loud to his girlfriend and getting agitated. —Nick
EMBEDDED: What’s a recent meme or post that made you laugh?
SAM ADLER-BELL: There was a clip on Twitter of Trump taking questions from reporters and one of them says, “As you know, my son is a third year relief pitcher at the University of Maryland...” and Trump interrupts him and says, “How would I know that? He said ‘as you know’... I don’t even know who this guy is.” I laughed at that. There was always something simultaneously unmooring and comforting about how funny Trump can be. Perversely, as his presidency has become more fundamentally scary and fucked, these little moments help keep him right-sized in my mind.
EMBEDDED: Do you tweet? Why?
SAM ADLER-BELL: I mostly tweet out new episodes of my podcast and pieces of writing. The twitter algorithm remains entirely capricious about links; some of these posts get traction, and some sit there like a dead fish. But I persist. Every once in a while, an old-fashioned posting mood catches me; I get exercised by some discourse and end up saying something sincere about politics or whatever—I nearly always regret this.
EMBEDDED: What do you use Instagram for?
SAM ADLER-BELL: I never learned how to use Instagram correctly, and it seems like the customs are always changing. I like to post photos of my pieces in physical magazines/newspapers. There’s that line in The Jerk (1979), where Steve Martin gets really excited about his name appearing in the new phonebook: “My name in print…things are about to start happening to me now…” Then there’s a quick cut to a deranged killer (played by M. Emmet Walsh) randomly pointing to the character’s name in the phonebook and setting out to shoot him. I like seeing my name in print, and I always think that line to myself when I do; but the obvious implication is that nothing good can come of it.
EMBEDDED: What types of videos do you watch on YouTube?
SAM ADLER-BELL: A lot of music stuff, VHS footage of Bob Dylan shows and country performances that were on TV. I really like watching comedians being interviewed on late night. The thing where the host asks questions to prompt them to do their material. I find that really comforting.
EMBEDDED: What do you like about TikTok? What do you dislike?
SAM ADLER-BELL: I don’t use it. Not for me. I think one should stop adopting new social media platforms after a certain age, in the same way one should stop following new fashion trends.
EMBEDDED: Are you concerned by the claims of censorship that some users have made since TikTok was taken over by investors led by Larry Ellison, an ally of President Trump?
SAM ADLER-BELL: I am vaguely concerned about everything having to do with Larry Ellison. A profoundly sinister figure. He should probably be in prison.
EMBEDDED: Do you watch Twitch, Kick, or any other livestreaming services? If so, which streamers?
SAM ADLER-BELL: I watched a lot of Nick Fuentes on Rumble while working on a piece. The odd thing is that Fuentes is not at all a typical streamer. He’s doing a throwback thing: looking into camera, no live chat, just monologuing. Incel Walter Cronkite. It’s really impressive.
I don’t watch him, but I approve of Hasan Piker, because I think it’s really important for left-wingers to be handsome.
EMBEDDED: Where do you tend to get your news?
SAM ADLER-BELL: We get the physical New York Times at home. I like to walk around the apartment, reading ridiculous parts of it out loud to my girlfriend and getting agitated.
EMBEDDED: How do you keep up with the online discourse? How important is it to you to do this?
SAM ADLER-BELL: I try not to. All of my work is better when I don’t have that bullshit in my head. But I need to keep up with the right a bit, so I follow what they’re up to on Twitter.
EMBEDDED: What’s the last strong opinion you had about a story, topic, or controversy online?
SAM ADLER-BELL: Like most people in my field, I’m pretty disgusted by AI and the people pushing it. But what can you say about it? I had a lot of opinions about One Battle After Another that I kept to myself.
EMBEDDED: What’s a popular misconception that you see repeated online?
SAM ADLER-BELL: Some of my right wing critics think I am descended from the New York intellectual Daniel Bell and the psychoanalyst Alfred Adler. I love that. Hopefully they don’t read this.
EMBEDDED: What are your favorite newsletters?
SAM ADLER-BELL: I read John Ganz and BD McClay ( BDM). I also like Jake Malooly’s Steely Dan substack Expanding Dan I was really into Mary Gaitskill’s substack for a while. I always think I’m gonna like Zizek’s, but he needs to put more effort into it.
EMBEDDED: How do you think Substack has changed media, if at all?
SAM ADLER-BELL: Oh, I don’t know. It seems more a symptom than a cause.
EMBEDDED: How would you describe the culture of Substack, in terms of the types of writing and thinking that it has encouraged?
SAM ADLER-BELL: The worst is obviously all the resentful stuff. The “I didn’t get what I deserved from my career in media” stuff. Just disgusting. But apparently there’s a big market for that.
EMBEDDED: What, if anything, is there to learn from the popularity of the looksmaxxing trend and influencers like Clavicular?
SAM ADLER-BELL: Nick Fuentes said something interesting: that for the incels, Clavicular is the answer to the black pill. These guys convinced themselves heterosexual coupling is reducible to looks and money—because women run the show, and they’re all completely vapid and uninterested in anything else—so to them, Clavicular is a hero because he found a work-around. You just gotta hit yourself in the head with a hammer, inject yourself with Chinese peptides, and spend all your time at the gym. I know I sound a million years old when I say this, but when I was a kid, the main message was that women will like you if you have confidence and a decent personality. I have found this to be true. But apparently it seems entirely implausible to the young guns. They would rather break all the bones in their face.
EMBEDDED: Do you have any advice for people who use sports betting apps or prediction markets?
SAM ADLER-BELL: Stop. This applies to myself.
EMBEDDED: Have you found Claude, ChatGPT, or any other AI tools useful? How so?
SAM ADLER-BELL: AI is super helpful for transcription. I understand there must be other harmless things that other writers use it for. But I am very hesitant to become reliant on it for anything. I don’t mind missing the boat. It’s okay. I am not good at what I do because I am very efficient or optimized. Inefficiency and friction is a big part of thinking, in my opinion.
EMBEDDED: Do you believe that advances in AI will spawn a new “underclass,” as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has suggested might happen?
SAM ADLER-BELL: I really don’t know. I trust the Marxists. Whatever they’re saying is probably right.
EMBEDDED: Are smartphones bad for us? Where do you fall on the Jonathan Haidt-Taylor Lorenz divide?
SAM ADLER-BELL: They’re obviously unbelievably bad. To deny this is crazy to me.
EMBEDDED: Do you try to limit your phone use? If so, what methods have been helpful for this?
SAM ADLER-BELL: I try everything. But this one works: my girlfriend and I set screentime limits for the apps we each use to waste time, then we set new screentime passwords that only the other person knows. (I know hers; she knows mine.) Which means if I want a few extra minutes on Twitter to tell someone to fuck off, I have to go to her and say, “uh, please baby can you unlock me?” and it’s so sordid and abject and pathetic that you have to have a really good reason. The way I wrote that, it sounds like a kink, but I promise you it’s not.
EMBEDDED: What’s something that you have observed about the online behavior of Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and/or Boomers?
SAM ADLER-BELL: Millennials invented “wokeness,” but we did so in the brief period when there was actually a bit of venture capital floating around the “young progressive media” space—and so it wasn’t entirely sincere. There was some cynicism involved in our embracing those attitudes and building a culture around them. Millennial media people were never as woke as they seemed. We were at least a little ironic about it. But Gen Z-ers and Boomers didn’t know that. They thought we meant every word. Now liberal Boomers are more woke than you can possibly imagine. (This also has something to do with their guilt about not being good enough parents or not leaving their kids enough money.) And Gen Zers are either disaffected and reactionary, or so convinced that the world is on the brink of disaster all the time (because we told them it was!) that they can’t see the point of doing regular politics.
EMBEDDED: How do you find recommendations for what to watch, read, and listen to?
SAM ADLER-BELL: My girlfriend is a critic who has read most of the good books and seen most of the good movies. So I get a lot of recs from her.
EMBEDDED: Have you had posts go viral? What is that experience like?
SAM ADLER-BELL: It used to happen. When I found out that you could mute a viral post and it ceased to exist for you, it stopped being a big deal. I am a fan of that old Tyler, the Creator post.
EMBEDDED: Who’s the coolest person who follows you?
SAM ADLER-BELL: John Early. I love him so much.
EMBEDDED: Who’s someone more people should follow?
SAM ADLER-BELL: The guy who edits and produces our podcast, Jesse Brenneman, is one of the secret geniuses of our time. He hosts a fake tech podcast called Tech Talk, that will be pored over one day as an essential cultural artifact of imperial decline. He also has a great substack where he writes about and shares playlists from the all-vinyl radio hour he hosts in Missoula.
EMBEDDED: Are you into any podcasts right now? How and when do you usually listen?
SAM ADLER-BELL: My favorite podcast is Hollywood Handbook. I will say this at any opportunity, because the guys who host it clearly don’t want to do it anymore. Hope they see this.
EMBEDDED: Are you in any groups on Reddit, Discord, or Facebook? What’s the most useful or entertaining one?
SAM ADLER-BELL: I recently inherited a 2006 SAAB from my mother. It doesn’t work in some really interesting ways. And SAAB doesn’t exist anymore as a company. So I’ve been spending a lot of time on SAAB owners Reddit forums.
EMBEDDED: What is your Wordle starting word?
SAM ADLER-BELL: Meats
EMBEDDED: What’s your go-to emoji, and what does it mean to you?
SAM ADLER-BELL: Salute emoji: I live to serve.
EMBEDDED: Do you text people voice notes? If not, how do you feel about getting them?
SAM ADLER-BELL: I don’t. My podcast cohost Matt sends me them sometimes, and I get really annoyed. But when I listen, it’s usually him saying something unbelievably sweet, and I feel bad for being mad.
EMBEDDED: Do you pay for a music streaming service, and if so, which one? What’s a playlist, song, album, or style of music you’ve listened to a lot lately?
SAM ADLER-BELL: Spotify. ’80s Van Morrison.
EMBEDDED: If you could only keep one streaming service for TV and/or movies, which would it be, and why? What’s a show that you’re really into right now?
SAM ADLER-BELL: HBO! I love The Pitt!!
EMBEDDED: What’s your favorite non-social media app?
SAM ADLER-BELL: Relisten. It has the whole Live Music Archive from archive.org on it. So you can save and download Grateful Dead tapes on the go. It’s so wonderful.
EMBEDDED: Have you recently read an article, book, or social media post about the internet that you’ve found particularly insightful?
SAM ADLER-BELL: I know this is vogueish, but I read that Walter Ong book about orality and literacy (because Joe Wiesenthal told me to). It was interesting. I definitely see its relevance to my life as a poster and podcaster.
EMBEDDED: What’s the last thing that brought you joy online?
SAM ADLER-BELL: I recently watched basically all of the videos on youtube of the comedian James Acaster appearing on various quiz and gameshows in the UK. He’s great.
Thanks Sam! Listen to his podcast, read his writing, and follow him on X.
More My Internet Kat Rosenfield ∙ Chrissy Correa ∙ Yi-Ling Liu ∙ Kaitlin Phillips ∙ Emma Specter ∙ Liz Franczak ∙ Anthony Fantano ∙ Alison Roman ∙ All
Fun read. Highly relate as a once very online millennial.
I work for Oracle, and I, too, am concerned about Larry Ellison.